Scotland’s cabinet minister for the rural economy has said lynx will be reintroduced over his “dead body”.

Discussing plans to reintroduce wild lynx to the country at NFU Scotland’s annual conference on Friday (9 February), Fergus Ewing said: “I cannot and I will not support anything which creates further gratuitous challenges or difficulty for our farming sector.”

“There will be no lynx in Scotland,” he added. “This will happen over my dead body.”